Road Trips to Theater

I spent a lot of time looking at trip this Summer to Wooster, Ohio where at the College of Wooster every summer is the Ohio Light Opera Festival that performs lesser known historical shows.  This year besides Carousel & Brigadoon they are doing George & Ira Gershwin's Tip Toes, Noel Coward's Bittersweet, Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience, and German operetta The Cousin from Batavia.

From the West Coast I would have to fly to Cleveland and then drive about an hour.  There are no direct flights from Vancouver to Cleveland,  so ultimately that made me give up on the plan.  Maybe another year.

Instead, I'm going for a long weekend in August to San Francisco where the Merola Opera Program - a summer intensive training program for young opera singers (I think somewhat in association with the SFO) - is doing performances of Rossini's Le Comte Omry.  The same weekend, Oakland's West Edge Opera has a rare performance of baroque composer Charpentier's David & Jonathan. (There is a blu-ray of a 2022 production of this Opera from the Royal Opera Versailles with costumes by  Christian Lacroix. I don't expect this to be as opulent, but that's just fine.)  I also got a ticket to see My Fair Lady at the San Francisco Playhouse one night.

Fortunately, I booked airfare & a hotel in April, as last week it was announced that the same weekend Dead & Company will be doing 3 huge shows at the Golden Gate Park polo fields.  Prices for hotels skyrocketed.

It will be interesting to see what August weather in San Francisco is like.  I guess I'll pack a couple sweaters?

Last August I flew to Albuquerque and drove up to Santa Fe for a first ever visit to the Santa Fe Opera.  Wow such beautiful scenery. I love the desert!  It was a short trip, but I still had time to do a morning hike at Bandolier National Monument, & visit Los Alamos where there is an interesting free museum about all the research done at the army base there.  We all know about the WWII stuff, and it is well covered with life sized models of "Fat Man" & "Little Boy."  But, on a personal level I was touched by the exhibit about the research done there on different viruses, including HIV.

That whole area is so scenic, that I can understand why so many people want to retire there if they can afford it 

 

Updated On: 6/2/25 at 06:13 PM

Fun hearing about other people's experiences!  I'm in NYC and don't own a car so I'm mostly limited to public transit, but I've gone to Boston a couple times (agree about the Light in the Piazza production!), DC a couple times (Signature Theatre in Arlington makes me wish I could take the trip more than once a year), and last year to the Berkshires for their production of Pipe Dream (because who knows when else I'd have a chance to see that).  Boston seems to get a lot of hot off the presses shows from New York in their regional theaters, so I'm debating making the trip to see Hills of California and We Had a World when they premiere there.

I'd love to do a proper road trip with a car sometime but alas the cost of renting one would be too much for me alone and I don't have any friends who would want to travel that far for a show.  I'd love to make it up to Olgonquit or Barrington sometime

I live in rural Minnesota and see a lot of local theatre, but I also drive to the Twin Cities to see shows in Minneapolis and St. Paul every other month or so, depending on my schedule.

In San Francisco & saw My Fair Lady at SF Playhouse last night through TodayTix - an excellent orchestra seat for $50 off the regular price.  They have assembled a fantastic cast of local performers. In the production they've made Higgins & Pickering to be about 30, so that they are closer in age to Eliza and it is primarily the class distinctions that create a gap between them instead of Highins feeling like a substitute father.  When Highins sings about the problems wrought "When you let a woman in your life" he feels more like a petulant, spoiled rich boy.  Meanwhile they've made Pickering a closeted gay man with a romantic crush on Higgins.  Without changing one line of the script, they find added meaning to some of his comments and we see him mooning over Higgins in the background.

Seeing some operas today & tomorrow.   

Good lord, when they say Summer in SF can be chilly they aren't making it up.  Last night it felt positively frosty.  Very windy & about 53 degrees.  Foolishly I thought while packing,  "It's  August, how cold can it really get?"  I did bring one sweater fortunately.

Updated On: 8/3/25 at 08:44 AM

Saturday night after seeing Rossini's Le Comte Ory at the Merola Opera fest in the afternoon, I went to gay/drag bar Oasis for the big show they're doing this summer - Jurassiq Parq.  Saturday was supposed to be the last night, but they've extended into September.   It's a satiric parody retelling of the first Jurrasic Park movie with a lot of send ups of the stars - eg Jeff Goldblum must keep his shirt unbuttoned at all times!  Seated tickets were $90 & still had a 2 drink minimum - though they didn't keep track very well..  The singing of well known pop songs with parody lyrics was all done live.  There were really only 2 drag queens and I would call most of the rest of the cast more female burlesque performers.  It was announced just over a week ago that due to financial difficulties Oasis will close by the end of the year.  I had fun,  and I guess now I can say I was there, but for $90 it felt very overpriced.  Seems like it is in a pretty lousy neighborhood.   There is one decent, upscale Thai place across the street, and the food was excellent -  but that's the only restaurant nearby I could find.  It seems like all auto repair places, and a big Costco a couple blocks away.  That seems like a pretty common problem in San Francisco,  so many totally dead neighborhoods that could use some proper planning so businesses don't just die off.

I'm staying at a less expensive hotel close by the Hilton, and there's people shooting up right out on the street.  You see that in Vancouver as well, but not right by any of the big fancy hotels.  San Francisco really is f@cked. 

But, the sun came out today & it is gorgeous down at the Embarcadero. 

Updated On: 8/3/25 at 04:00 PM

Made a bit of an impulse decision this week and scrapped the plans I had in mind for this coming Summer and decided instead to fly to Toronto and then go to the Stratford & Shaw festivals for the first time.  I've actually never been to Toronto ever.  I'll be in the city proper the weekend of their big Caribbean Days festival. 

Both theatre fests have programs of pretty safe, stalwart plays & musicals.   Last night I booked for Stratford & bought tickets for Othello, The Tempest, Guys & Dolls, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Some of the other titles they will be doing this summer include Midsummer Night's Dream, Death of a Salesman,  Something Rotten, & Waiting for Godot.  Like I said above a lot of theatre stalwarts.

The seating availability at Shaw looks good (it is still only January! ) so I'll wait to book, but I'm thinking there I will see Heartbreak House, Amadeus, & One For the Pot by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton - the only thing I'm not familiar with.   They are also doing a production of Funny Girl, but it seems to always be scheduled the same day & time as Heartbreak House.

It looks like in the city of Toronto there should be some sort of Shakespeare in the park as well, though no title anounced yet for this year.

My biggest reason for deciding on this trip is that  direct flights from Vancouver are about a third the price of what I was finding to fly to Europe over the same time period.

quizking101: I didn’t start road tripping for theatre until around 2023, but I enjoy each time I do, especially the adrenaline rush of seeing two shows in two different cities in a 24 hour period - which I’ve done a few times.

One of my favorites though was last year, some friends and I went up to White Plains to see Jagged Little Pill (exclusively for Autumn Hurlbert) and we were all in the front row, basically being her cheering section, and boy did she RIP into those songs. (Side note: WPPAC is inside of a mall, but it’s a VERY nice theatre)

I had tickets for Jagged and then COVID hit so I actually never got to see it. I am an Alanis fan so I would have travelled to WPPAC to see it had I known. I have just started following them so I can keep them on my radar. Thanks for the info, it does look like a nice theater.

I am sad now because I found out recently that one of favorites, Kate Baldwin, will play Margaret in The Light on the Piazza at the Opera Theater of St. Louis in June and as much as I would like to see this, it is just too far for a road-trip. I keep google mapping it though. 

Over the years that I first moved to Colorado from PA and was on BWW every day, I had dreamed of going to Paper Mill and Arena Stages. I loved reading the comments about the shows at the regional venues everywhere. 

Fast forward to February of 2023. I had moved back east to Jersey City in 2011 and was planning to move back to Colorado. I decided that before I move I HAD to see a show at one of those 2 theaters. I Picked Arena Stages. Called a close childhood friend who lives in Maryland and asked if she wanted to see a show with me. She said yes. We are both single so I took the train down to D.C., went to 2 museums and a gallery,  On the 14th we had a "Valentines date", she paid for dinner and I paid for the show tickets, and we saw "Ride the Cyclone". I was so happy I finally got to do my theatre road trip to see a show I was dying to see a production of. Best part is that she knew nothing about the show and came out raving about it. 

Now back in Colorado. I have A LOT of great theatre memories from my time back there but it stands out as one of my favorites.

Updated On: 1/19/26 at 01:35 PM